Mage PvP guide
Rogue Keep your mana shield up at all times, but even that might not save you. Every sixth hit you take will crit for 2000+ hp. Get them out of stealth and keep them from restealthing. The dot on fireball and pyroblast are handy for this role. You will absolutely need to sheep them, but beware, they can counter all your tricks (once every 5 minutes, twice if they have preparation up). They can sprint in stealth and when chilled, they can vanish out of frost nova, and they can kick you when you're trying to sheep at point blank range. Once in sheep form and without vanish, they are usually yours to play with. Save your blink for their cheap shot/kidney shot. Try spamming lvl1 arcane explosion if they are stealthed, and your blink is still recharging. Most mages consider rogues an even matchup, usually the one to initiate battle wins -- From a different point of view, never keep your mana shield up, unless your health decreased disproportionally to your mana. Using mana shield will quickly leave you with half health and no mana when fighting a rogue. My advice is to take that first hit or two. Frost mages can kite rogues relatively easily. Note that sprint is on a 5 minute cooldown, and preparation is on a 10 minute cooldown. Well, for a frost mage, your ice block is on a 5 minute cooldown, and cold snap is on a 10 minute cooldown (HINT HINT). Then again, cooldowns are not always necessary. On the first hit, assuming you have ice armor, blink out. Some may disagree, and say that you should figure out if your being stunned first. You simply do not have the time. Blink immediately. Next, examine your situation. Are you slow-poisoned? Did you get kicked? Did blink fail miserably and move you 1 foot to the left? If you have the Presence of Mind (POM) talent, is it cooled down? If you have PoM, then use it with Polymorph immediately after blink. This is hilarious. Within 2 seconds, you have turned the tide on the fight and assumed control. Sheeping the rogue gives you plenty of time to wind up a huge fireball from after, and let any poisons cooldown, or bandage. Note that with the latest PVP trinkets, you should consider recasting Polymorph after about 3 seconds just in case they are considering using the trinket. Once dotted, rank 1 frost bolt is your friend. As your fireball is launched, cast this. Both will hit about the same time. Now they are dotted, slowed, and away from you. At this point, any decent mage should know what to do. Warrior Keeping distance is about all you have to do here. Your tricks are frostbolt, frost nova, cone of cold, blink and maybe blastwave - his tricks are charge (out of combat only), harmstring and intercept. You may blink out of the stun of charge and intercept, so save your blink. Intercept is the longer stun -- if you find yourself charged, it's easier to take the beating and use frost nova to gain range. After intercept is used up, warriors have no easy way of gaining range on you. The warrior PvP trinket removes stuns (Impact) and roots (Frost Nova / Frostbite), but does not affect Polymorph. You should generally beat a warrior. Priest Priests frequently fear you first, apply shadow word: pain, and then start inflicting any other damage according to their build. Some priests are attentive enough to dispell your buffs, but frankly, your innate buffs won't matter much against a priest. Killing a priest, as against any healing class, requires suprise and burst damage. Improved Counterspell helps since it can temporarily block attempts at reshielding, fearing, and silence. The usual sequence of events against a suprised, but full-health, priest as an arcane-specced mage is to start by activating Arcane Power. Follow up with Fireball or Frostbolt, depending on your build and preference, Presence of Mind, your largest nuke, improved counterspell, fireblast, and cone of cold. Use instant-cast Arcane Explosion until target dies. After the first damage spell, you should be running towards the priest to get in range for cone of cold. There are, of course, several variations on this sequence of events, including ones which use frost nova to substantially increase critical strike odds if you are frost-specced. Priests players are often prone to neglecting stamina gear, possibly due to having a shield, fortitude, and excellent healing spells, and this trait is the main reason suprise attacks can work. In normal combat, priests should almost always beat you, regardless of their build. Warlock Have self remove curse hotkeyed, this should be obvious. Try getting close to him, or even behind him to make his spellcasting fail. You'll want to counterspell their shadow tree, and you'll get many chances to do that. His fear is recastable (subject to diminishing returns, and can be broken by damage), and won't heal you like poly does. A warlock can easily equal your damage if he's willing to sacrifice Soul Shards. *'Succubus:' Most warlocks will have this pet out, as it's the most dangerous one. Its seduce is a two second cast cast, recastable, and does not heal you like poly does. If you can get a poly off, you will get seduced. Seduce is considered a charm effect and is subject to diminishing returns. *'Felhunter:' You can polymorph the warlock, but the felhunter will dispell the debuff. Additionally, the felhunter can dispell your mage/ice armor, and counterspell/silence you. The felhunter counterspell and devour magic are on a medium cooldown timer. If the warlock has put points in Master Demonologist, the Felhunter provides 60 resistance to all schools of magic at level 60. *'Imp:' This is the only pet you should consider to kill, as its fireballs interrupt your non-instant spells too often, and goes down fast (loosing blood pact would also knock some HP off the warlock). *'Voidwalker:' For the most part, you can just ignore it. The chief danger of the Voidwalker is that the Warlock may sacrifice it giving him self up to 30 seconds to escape, heal up, or call for help. Succubus and felhunter will probably get you killed, while the other two will probably get the warlock killed. Mage Contrary to the popular belief, victory against a mage is not a matter of skill. It's a matter of your build, and of the lucky resists on polymorph or counterspell. Though it's still important, it'll take a lot of skill for a frost mage to beat a PvP speced Fire mage. Watch what spells the other mage likes to use and counterspell them when you think it'll do the most harm. Try to throw them off their balance. Blinking behind them can also help you confuse them, though it's near useless against experiencesd mages. Remember to use your Instant Cast spells to their max potential, and have Fire/Frost ward up. It's not going to save you much but it's better than nothing. Dampen magic is also useful. You'll want to avoid using Mana Shield, considering the amount of damage a mage can do, if you have Mana Shield up against one it'll drain your mana within seconds. On the flip side, if the other mage has the shield up use it to your advantage. Forget about mana efficency and attack him with any and all of your most damaging spells. If he runs out of mana you can sheep him, Evocation yourself up to full mana and re-start the battle. He'll have no mana, and you'll be full. Druid Having Dampen Magic is an obvious must against any caster class, but even more so against the druid, so that you might actually last a while against his moonfire. The dangers are that you can't polymorph-lock him, you can't Frost Nova him for long, he can heal, he has instant-cast Moonfire to kill you, and he has instant-cast travelform to run you down. The one particular weakness with a druid, regardless of configuration is the lack of a controllable, low-cooldown way of stunning, dazing, or otherwise reliably disrupting spellcasting. Moreover, many druids have comparably low DPS and neglect to acquire credible PvP gear, primarily due to their desire to play in high end raids, which frequently puts them in the role of a healer. Most epic druid gear places too much emphasis on healing rather than enhancing their true power as a hybrid class. Consequently, many druid player gear configurations result in laughable damage enhancement, but keep in mind that you can't undo any of it innately. The trick is knowing how to deal with various druid attacks you. Bear form should be considered a low threat, even with the stun, which you can blink out of, and the frenzied regeneration and extra hit points. You will significantly outdamage the bear form druid simply by standing your ground and having frost armor up. The two dangerous druid threats come from a well-equipped feral druid in cat form, and any druid engaged in chain-casting Moonfire on you. The latter tactic can be counterproductive in mass combat, because any friendly healer can spend far less mana to outheal moonfire spam. If you spent talent points in making your Arcane Missiles uninterruptible from damage, it may be possible to outdamage some druids engaging in this tactic with Arcane Missiles, or just counter with Scorch. Feral druids in cat form are particularly dangerous if, like certain players are prone to do, you neglect your stamina gear. Contrary to popular belief Frostnova and sheep aren't completely useless against druids. They can escape any form of movement reduction by shapeshifting; however, it can require a significant amount of mana to constantly shapeshift. Keep in mind that the usual reason to be in normal humanoid form is to heal. If the druid is a specced balance or feral, you can wait for the switch back to humanoid form, watch for the healing to start (the instant-cast heal over time won't save the druid for impending death) and use counterspell. If the druid is restoration-specced, you may have to premptively use counterspell to stop instant heals -- any mage engaging in PvP should have improved counterspell to silence the target. Use whatever burst damage you can to finish the druid off. Careful druids, particularly restoration druids, know to heal well before they become low on health. Depending on the druid's talent configuration and gear quality compared to yours, you may have an even chances against him. The player with the initiative will likely win. Hunter Don't feel safe, a hunter can damage you and outdistance you. You may want to polymorph the pet, but it's more important to blink into his deadzone (just outside of melee range and a little too close for ranged weapons) and stay there. Frost nova is essential. Immediately after frost novaing the hunter is the only time you will get a frost bolt or fireball off on a decent hunter. When he dies, make sure you killed him (G to retarget) and he isn't just feigning death. Polymorph can also come in handy, wheather you polymorph the hunter or the pet depends on the situation. In most cases the hunter saw you coming on his minimap, and has probably laid a trap somewhere. You don't want to step on that, try guessing where it is and blink around it. Even then the hunter may feign death and drop a trap underneath you. If the hunter's pet is large and red, you are in trouble, it is under the effect of bestial wrath it does 50% more damage and you can't sheep it and you can't frost nova it and it probably runs significantly faster than you. A hunter with equivalent gear to yours should generally beat you, unless you manage to close to within melee range or just outside of it with enough health and mana. In that case, you can snare the hunter and outdamage his combined melee and pet damage, even a pet with bestial wrath. Paladin Keep your distance. As against any healing class, you are automatically at a disadvantage, assuming the paladin doesn't foolishly wait until he's one or two-shottable to start healing. Paladins who sacrifice mana and stamina for attack power and increased crit chances, "critadins", are fairly vulnerable to defeat, but at the same time, they may kill you even faster. Paladins can use Blessing of Freedom or Cleanse to undo any form of movement reduction you can inflict. They have two innate ways of inhibiting movement: Hammer of Justice, one that you can blink out of, and with the advent of patch 1.9, possibly the Repentance talent at the end of the Retribution talent tree. A paladin has two forms of invulnerability and Lay on Hands, but since patch 1.9, there is a 1-minute cooldown debuff inflicted on the beneficiary of invulnerability effects. Most paladins will activate Seal of Command in small-scale combat to inflict a lot of damage, which has the peculiar advantage in that it procs holy damage. The proc itself can inflict damage exceeding the actual weapon damage when used in conjunction with other gear, seals and judgement effects, and it crits like melee damage rather than spell damage. There are no known innate player resistances to holy effects in the game. The danger here is that in much the same way a shaman benefits from a Windfury proc, a paladin can get a sudden burst of lethal damage. Should the paladin manage to reheal himself to full health when you are down to less than half life, attempt to resheep to escape death. All of this combined with their high HP and plate mail makes them hard to take down. However the mage is the probably the best dps class in the game so, you still stand a fair chance. They might be able to escape your snares but that doesn't mean they'll always do it, or at least not within 1-2 seconds. Frost nova can still be useful, and the same goes for Polymorph. How you fight depends on your build, just keep your distance and do as much damage as you can. However try to use up your Insta Cast spells at the beggining so their cooldonw wears off. You'll need them for when the Paladin heals. When he does heal, counterspell it. If you have Imp. CP Talent then it'll silence him for 4 seconds. That's 4 seconds for you to do all the burst damage you can, be it Fire Blst, Cone of Cold, Blastwave, or anything else that hurts him. A Paladin will be a tough fight but not unbeatable. Shaman Shaman are arguably the most powerful class in individual combat. They have an excellent balance of healing, melee power, and spell damage. In many small-scale combat scenarios, shaman can outperform mages even in nuking. Elemental-specced shaman cast damage spells faster than you, and spend fewer talent points to achieve key performance characteristics, such as critical strike damage bonus improvement, clearcasting, and critical strike rate increases. The downside is mana efficiency, but mana efficiency is not usually a key consideration unless both sides can heal. Moreover, shaman can plant totems, which consume valuable attacks to counter while continuing to benefit the shaman unattended. Your hope lies in surprising the shaman with an extreme amount of burst damage and judicious use of counterspell to prevent fresh grounding totems or heals from undoing your efforts. Generally speaking, you'll want to keep your distance, 25 or more yards if possible (at this range, the shaman loses his ability to interrupt your spells, and is left with a rather less effective ranged lightning spell. However, they may resort to using chain lightning, which casts quickly and does decent damage at the expense of mana efficiency. Normal shaman will attempt to close to within melee range. Once there, they can interrupt any non-instant spell every 5 or 6 seconds, depending on talent build, not to mention the constant interruption from melee damage. Combined with latency effects, this effectively means that shaman can lock down fireball and arcane missile casts. Scorch, polymorph, and instant cast spells are about the only things which you can succesfully cast. Decent shaman will purge off your buffs at the earliest opportunity. Any half decent shaman should beat you.